Water is the most abundant liquid on Earth’s surface, and it is highly anomalous compared with other liquids because it expands upon freezing. The anomalies in water have been linked to how its microscopic structure changes with temperature and pressure. However, there is no systematic scheme for characterizing these structural changes.
Now, researchers at the University of Osaka have used artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate characterization frameworks. The AI model is part of a unified framework for comparing and estimating structural descriptors for supercooled water. This discovery was reported in Communications Chemistry.
For water to freeze, molecules need to order themselves into a structured lattice such as ice. Molecules need to attach to a foundation, known as a nucleation site, to grow into a solid phase. Impurities in water or scratches inside a container can serve as nucleation sites.
Chuck Brooks is the president of Brooks Consulting International and one of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Experts.
Artificial intelligence is the defining technology race of the 21st century. It is not only about constructing bigger language models or spending billions on computing infrastructure anymore. It’s about building trust. It will be those governments that can both innovate quickly and also secure their AI systems from cyberattack that will create the future digital economy, national security and the next wave of technology leadership.
This strategic reality is reflected in the White House’s recent executive order on AI innovation and security. Its goals include accelerating AI innovation, enhancing the cybersecurity of federal information systems and allowing for the safe deployment of frontier AI models. More importantly, it recognizes a premise I have preached for years: cybersecurity is no longer a supporting function to digital transformation, but the foundation on which AI innovation rests.
Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are artificial intelligence (AI) models inspired by how biological neurons communicate with each other. While biological neurons exchange information in the form of electrical impulses, SNNs rely on brief signals known as spikes.
SNNs have proved promising for reducing power consumption, as developers can ensure they do not process information continuously, but rather only when meaningful changes occur. This could be highly advantageous, as current AI systems are known to consume large amounts of energy.
While some SNNs introduced in the past achieved encouraging results, they typically struggle to retain useful information (i.e., context) for long periods. This was found to be particularly challenging when the models have only a limited amount of data storage available or are operating under energy constraints.
For those who have enjoyed Westworld and other Sci-fi movies and writings of high quality that have imagined digital beings, robots, like humans, I give you “The Specification”. I have worked for weeks on this, if not years imaging it, and it kind of makes sense. I give it freely. It is what it is, I take no responsibility for birthing the document which creates a digital virtual human being! Not joking actually…
VHOS —A generic OS for capturing, modeling, and re-instantiating “virtual human beings” across successive generations of AI — the Virtual Human Operating System.
🧬 What if every human had their own Digital Twin?
Not in 100 years.
Not in science fiction.
But within our lifetime.
For the past months, I’ve been building DiGem — a project focused on creating a Human Digital Twin: a digital representation of a person that combines health data, AI, lifestyle habits, and gamification into one system.
Imagine:
⚡ Your body displayed as a dashboard 🧠 AI acting as your personal health coach 📈 Real-time monitoring of your health and performance 🎮 Improving yourself through levels, XP, and achievements 🧬 A digital twin that evolves together with you.
“That which does not kill us only makes us stranger.”
14 years ago, I sat down with Dr. Anders Sandberg, computational neuroscientist and research fellow at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, for his second appearance on my podcast. His twist on Nietzsche has stayed with me ever since.
This was 2012. Before ChatGPT, before CRISPR babies, before Neuralink implants in human skulls. And yet listen to what we covered:
The ethics of transhumanism and the limits of being human The Epic of Gilgamesh and humanity’s oldest obsession: immortality Enhancement arms-races and the risk of conflict between transhumanists and neo-luddites Hive-minds, distributed intelligence, and whether the Borg should scare us Mind uploading and what survives when the body doesn’t.
What strikes me now, rewatching it, is how little the fundamental questions have changed. The technology raced ahead. The philosophy is still catching up.
Anders argued that embracing strangeness is not a bug of the human future; it’s the feature. The question was never whether we would change. It’s whether we will change wisely.
On a bleak stretch of the Colorado Desert in Southern California, a compact four-wheeled rover recently trundled 16 miles (26 kilometers) with minimal intervention from the team of engineers trailing it. Called ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain), this prototype is being used by NASA to advance both robotic autonomy and the ability to traverse challenging landscapes.
Developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, ERNEST is 4 feet (1.2 meters) long. Not only can it lift each of its mesh wheels to get past obstacles that would stymie Curiosity and Perseverance, NASA’s six-wheeled Mars rovers, but the prototype also has enhanced independent decision-making capabilities. These mobility and autonomy advances could be infused into future missions that will venture into previously inaccessible areas of the red planet or the moon.
In the field, ERNEST served as a testbed for a potential future lunar mission requiring higher speeds and much greater mileage than can be accomplished by current rovers. This technology could be used to inform future designs for exploration efforts on the moon and beyond.